What Chefs Keep in Their First Aid Kits

This Sunday, the New York Times ran an illustrated story on 13 chefs' battle scars. We learned that Le Bernardin's Michael Laiskonis lost the tip of his left thumb chopping onions, Marlow and Sons' Sean Rembold burned his own forearm in solidarity with his fellow line cooks, and Luce's Dominique Crenn had a run-in with an oyster knife. The most horrifying story came from Top Chef winner Harold Dieterle, chef of Perilla:

In 1998, I was deboning a New York strip steak when a dishwasher bumped into me. The knife sliced through my thumb right down to the bone. Light-headed and dizzy, I drank a Coke before cauterizing the wound on the flat-top grill. Then I drove to the local drugstore to buy gauze and tape, and returned to work. After we'd completed dinner service, I took myself to the nearest E.R., where I was given 32 stitches.

It's a good thing the restaurant was close to a hospital. But for those other, less intense wounds, what do the pros keep in their kitchens' First Aid kits?

-Locanda Verde chef Andrew Carmellini, who revealed to the Times that in a sleepless haze he made the rookie mistake of picking up a hot pan, says that prescription Silvadine Cream is his go-to ointment for burns.

-Locanda Verde's Pastry chef, Karen DeMasco, thinks butter works just as well for burns.